Interview: Miikka Makio Shares His ‘Foodiac’ Journey

Want to impress your friends with a gourmet dinner? What if I told you, that on your next kitty party, you could ditch the restaurant and give your friends a fine dining experience – right in the comfort of your home?

Imagine an expert chef, dishing out delicious bites in a cuisine of your choice while you bond and banter in the cosiest corner of your home.

Sounds too good to be true? Believe it or not, it is!
A newly launched service – Foodiac lets you browse and book online the services of an expert chef for your next event and ensures that he’s at your doorstep with all the ingredients and artilery to give your guests an experience their taste-buds will not forget.

A shot from the Foodiac launch event

To elaborate further on the concept of Foodiac and how the service works, we interviewed Foodiac Co-founder and CEO Mr. Miikka Makio.

Foodiac Co-founder and CEO Miikka Makio

Miikka is a 27-year old entrepreneur from Finland. He has done his masters in economics and has background in business. He has been working in companies such as IBM and smaller commerce firms in multiple sales roles before founding Foodiac and pursuing his passion within his own company.

“When I was younger, I couldn’t really picture myself as being an entrepreneur. But never say never! Once we came up with the idea of Foodiac, I knew that it was something that I would have the passion to pursue. I’ve always loved food and combining business and food is a dream come true.”

Mrs HD: Tell us something about the origin of foodiac.

Miikka: The idea of Foodiac was invented on a sailing boat in the middle of the so-called Finnish “summer” – when it was pouring rain from the sky. The core-team of Foodiac has always had the passion for food. In university, we established an association around food and culinary experiences led by me and the other main founder of Foodiac, Jouni.

With Foodiac we started first doing everything manually and testing the concept. I think the first chef that joined was either the winner of Top Chef Finland or the Chef of the Year in Finland, so we got a rather good start!

Miikka Makio addressing the media along with co-founder Jouni

Mrs HD: What is the underlying thought behind foodiac? How did you arrive at this business idea?

Miikka: The underlying idea is that there are some many talented chefs out there that you have never heard that even exist. At the same time they would like to start doing “freelancing” besides their jobs and eventually as their main job. Everyone wants to be the next Gordon Ramsay. This is when Foodiac comes by connection you to the chef. The goal is to offer an alternative for fine-dining restaurants and an easy way to find the perfect catering for your event.

Foodiac -Fine dining experience in the comfort of your home

We started as a marketplace for all sort of catering but noticed that there’s an ever-growing need for private chefs. But as you can see from our website, our service providers offer a wide range of services from home-dinners to business catering, and we also have food trucks, wine tastings etc. onboard as well.

The most common services are of course home dinners. We at Foodiac want to offer something more unique and special compared to eating out at a restaurant. I have tried a few of our chefs in my own events and although I might be biased to say but I have never had even close to as good and unique experience in a restaurant that I had with the private chef. You really get closer to the food. The chef can tell you where the food comes from, show how it’s made and most importantly is putting all his love out there on your plate only. And combining cooking-school elements to the dinner is a nice way to make the event even more special.

Mrs HD; How does foodiac work?

Miikka: All of our service providers have profile online atwww.foodiac.ae (revealing one new chef per day). You can see some info about their background, see example menus etc. So through the website you can contact directly on chef or leave an open inquiry to reach multiple chefs and get multiple quotations. This latter way is very popular among our corporate customers as you get easily multiple quotations with different pricing from curated chefs, see their reviews etc. Makes your life easy.

Mrs HD: What sets foodiac apart from its competition and who would you see as your direct competitor?

Miikka: I won’t mention names but yes there is some competition out there but they are doing things a bit differently. And of course there are many freelancing chefs already doing private chef gigs but we see them as our potential partners, not really competitors.

Our key is offering wide range of different service providers for various events. Whether it’s a consumer dinner, large business catering, wedding, cooking school, wine-tasting etc. we can deliver services for all of these events!

Mrs HD: For which occassions do you recommend hiring foodiac’s services?

Miikka: There are so many occasions where you can hire our chefs! But next time you have lets say 6-12 people and thinking about going dining in a fine-dining restaurant, don’t do it. Ask a quotation from www.foodiac.ae and see what our chefs have to offer. It’s really an experience you won’t forget!

Mrs HD: What is the future of Foodiac? Any new implementations or elements to watch out for ?

Miikka: We have just launched in Dubai so we have to adapt to the local markets and see which works the best. One thing that we are thinking is bringing a Scandinavian high-end chef to Dubai and organizing some nice cooking-school / dinner around this chef. Dubai doesn’t really have that many Scandinavian restaurants either so this might be a fresh experience for many.

A shot from the Foodiac launch event

Foodiac Co-founder and CEO Miikka Makio

Foodiac -Fine dining experience in the comfort of your home

Slice of Dubai attended the Foodiac launch dinner last week, where we got to interact first-hand with Foodiac chefs and exchange cards, discuss the origins of a particular dish and even taste them for ourselves. It is certainly one thing to have an indifferent waiter serve a good-looking dish prepared by somebody else, and another to see him prepare it right in front of you while passionately explaining how it is made. And what’s better? Whether you like your dish with an extra dash of seasoning, or a tad less hot – you can have it customized to your taste right in front of you!